Localization Academy

Innovation Through Continuous Localization – Patricia Paladini Adell From Paladini Global

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Innovation. Automation. Technology. How does localization look like when these are not just empty marketing phrases? Patricia Paladini Adell from Paladini Global will share with you how it is to have innovation as your main responsibility.

Patricia helps companies reach continuous localization with the Shift Left approach. Why do you need to think like a developer, salesman, and project manager? Find out in this episode where we also discussed:

  • What is continuous localization using Shift Left approach
  • Reducing internal localization team from 120 to 9 people
  • Why traditional LSPs need to reinvent themselves
  • Innovation in educating internal teams – create heroes and villains!
  • Teaching developers to write better for machine translation
  • How to optimize your query management
  • Planning the day in a… swimming pool?!

This is episode #27 of my social interaction practice, also known as The Localization Podcast 🙂 #localization​ and #translation​ insight delivered to you by the power of voice, this time with Patricia Paladini Adell.


Andrej Zito 

Right. Hello, Patricia. Welcome to the podcast.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Hello.

Andrej Zito 

How are you doing?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

I’m doing great. Thank you.

Andrej Zito 

Where exactly are you located right now?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Right now. I’m located in a very small room on my apartment. Because I’m in Barcelona. And we have this COVID-19 situation. So basically, we are locked down the home. So I’m really locked down in my home. Real ablow because I’m basically trying to cope with all the activities and the family life and work and presentations. Through this new situation we live in right now. Hopefully in a couple of weeks, we will allow to go out and get some furniture and situation will get better and we will enjoy the outdoors again.

Andrej Zito 

Yes, Spain is one of the worst countries that were hit by COVID. Right?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Yes, we are the second one, the second wars, but we are doing good. And the situation has really improved. And you can see all these groups getting down. So we are we have gone through over the peak. And we’re doing good. So situation is starting to change not economy. Obviously this is really hitting not only the health, but also the economy. But at least from the health point of view, we are starting to recover. And people are starting to feel really safe. And its people is really doing a good job people is really staying home helping each other. It’s a really interesting situation. from a sociological point of view, I would say. It’s really we’re learning a lot.

Andrej Zito 

From your LinkedIn profile. I believe that you started your own company just quite recently, I think it’s maybe less than a year if I’m not mistaken. Right? Yeah. How do you How has your life changed with COVID? Like, were you working a lot from home before? Or did you have an office to go to?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

No, I’m working from home. And I think I started officially my own my own company, like the day before the lockdown. At the time, you know, but I’m working I was planning to work from home. So that’s kind of nice. No, no, no major changes. But yes, I started my own company, but at the global I want to provide Consultancy Services to companies in order to help them to, to streamline the localization process by implementing the right. Right workflows. So they can, you know, make localization like basically an afterthought, instead of having to spend time or money to to set up a localization process.

Andrej Zito 

We’ll talk about that more later. I would be interested to find out how you got into localization in the first place. If you remember that.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Yes. That was a long time ago, I’m afraid to say I studied biology. That was my what I did study right when I was 18. So I studied biology. And I was really enjoying it, but I was also enjoying very much languages. So at some point, I decided that I wanted to become a medical translator. So I moved from biology to translate translation and translation, school, college and basically specialize on medical translation, because I have all these biology background. However, when I was just about to finish my degree in the source of everything, I come across to some models, some hours in a particular course of what they call transmission technology, technology. applied to translation that was very new. I mean, we don’t even have an email that time. Okay, and translation memories and cut to where it just happened. So that was very, very heavily processed. And thereby you kind of realize that localization meaning adapting software, and translating software interfaces at that time, plus the technology that can help translators to translate to do really take a lot of profitable translation. And again, remembering that time, dictionaries were paper, so we had to go to Sam’s, you know, with old dictionaries, because we have not yet realized that. That was very interesting. And I basically thought, well, that’s the future. The old translation techniques with paper and detours, this is not gonna stay. So that’s how I specialized on capitals. Initially, I started working on petrol. So I became a cat expert. There was a travel expert at that time for a company I used to work in Dublin at that time. And then I went back to college teaching tools and technology applied to translation and localization. And after that, I started to work in cooperation, which basically, they needed to set up from scratch. They call globalization I was taking care of the technology.

Andrej Zito 

Was Trados one of the early CAT tools?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Trados was one of the early commercial CAT tools, there were another ones like omega, and that time we had dejavu, we have trust seat, travels and a couple of more, but they were very simple. Basically, you have this dongle that you had to attach, maybe you are to join for that, but we don’t go to the top, you would flogging the preacher. And that, you know, you didn’t have a dongle. You weren’t that you were dead, basically. So that yeah, I think those were the initial tools we were working with at college. And not everybody was working language agencies, our language providers, they were still delivering translations through on paper or an on floppy disk. I’m feeling very old right now. I have to say. Anyway,

Andrej Zito 

I know that a lot has changed, right? In those years. So you mentioned that you worked for this corporation. I think like we can say it was ca technologies because it’s on your LinkedIn profile. Right? And if I’m not mistaken, you work there for 12 years, right? You are the globalization director. So I’m wondering like, what are your memories, like how has the localization evolved during those years?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

I worked at it was computer associated with original them, then it changed to see a technologies that’s not married American Corporation of somewhere they, they basically produce. So we’re and we were helping the corporation to localize all this over the province. This has changed a lot when I was hired. And I was hired as a translator, by the way as a Spanish translator. But in a more on a couple of months, I become a Translation Manager. And it was two years later, I become director, position director. That beginning they didn’t have any tools and technology in place. So basically, we were getting files for translation streaming. And not you know, the worst part of that is that we were doing software localization. So we would get a txt file. That was supposed to be a multi language file. So you were supposed to translate the Spanish after the French and then send it to somebody else, maybe Oh my god. So they will type in that txt file, the Chinese and then the Japanese and they go back to project manager. So that was horrible.

Andrej Zito 

It must have been such a long cycle, right? Like if he’s like language after language, you didn’t run in parallel?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

No, no, no, because there was no share option. So basically, you cannot you know, if you want to run in parallel, that means somebody has to copy paste.

Andrej Zito 

Yes, yes. Yes.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

It was a disaster. That’s why we hired it the whole so that is good. And right, you know, then we start to realize that this is not gonna work. And then brought in set, okay to mention to commercial tools, yeah, yours, of course. So they brought in at that time as the workflow, which was some kind of online platform SPL based. And that was what we use, we set up to use that platform for documentation, all the documentation was in authoraid. At that time, and I was an expert in primary care and several older DDP tools, because I had been teaching those tools in the college. And last in parallel, I was teaching at college at the masters. And so basically, we set up this authoraid, which was similar from, from a content management tool to primary care. And so we said that this DLL workflow connected to operate in order to translate the documentation, so that was kind of the first cut tool that we happen to have. There was a lot of limitations at that time. So we know downloaded those IDB files, sending them to the translation provided or doing the translation in house that was a mixture. And on the silver side, we decided to use catalysts that time. And obviously, this improved a lot of process. So we started to have time and interview nology, putting together a proper term base, etc. But those tools, as I said, had a lot of limitations. Because nothing, everything was desktop. Sharing translation memories was not really like real time was not an option. For the particularity of the silver price, we used to have a CA technologies. catalyst was not really able to support them. Because we didn’t have like mainframe files, which are totally different story, a huge products for desktop, IP, desktop tools and security. So basically, catalyst was not really the best tool to use. So what we decided that, you know, we kept the three year workflow par for a while, we decided to concentrate on some work, we develop software tools, we develop software tools, internal server to the good support those mainframe files and any other file that we were working with more than 70 different file types. Basically, the products that ca technology was selling at that time, most of them, there was not that many organic development, most of the project were created by your precision, so they say would acquire different software’s, and they would put together with some of us create a suite. So imagine the the know the legacy he would have there, like different coding languages, different translations, known by all sorts of companies. So managing all these huge amount of files, and all this legacy content was really a challenge. So that’s what we decided to develop two kind of tools for software localization. One was source code scanner, we wanted to, you know, we wanted to make sure that the files that development, things were treated as for translation, were actually translatable. They didn’t have an embedded test that they were supporting Unicode that the you know, variables, tax were used in some kind of standard way, etc. And the other tool we created was an editor, a translation editor for solver files, very much customized for games, because the only way we would find out two parts to generate those resource files for translation out of this Mare Magnum of coding on file format was using our own, you know, generating like intermediate file format, which would look content, the English, the translation, a lot of meta data, because meta data was the key in order to get those files translated. And the only way to process this file, which was a txt file was doing our own editor. And I was involved in all this process from the very beginning. And that was, for me, the best learning in this area however I have ever had. So for me working at a technology was really, really, really operate opportunity to understand or area from the very, very, very from the very, very bottom, because we were solving challenges all the time. And sometimes was really frustrating I would say, however, it was really a learning experience because I managed to understand, I managed to think like a developer like a salesman, like a project manager, like, you know, how can you manage cost when you are developing a tool? This helped me also to manage movie moved in multilingual teams worldwide. So I was managing people in India, developers in India, developers in China, developers in Japan, translators, project managers, and sales, guys, because we were supposed to contact sales guy to try to understand what were the localization requirements, etc. So that was like the best school ever for me. On on all area, and after the software, then we move away from our three and Messier workflow, we move to another cloud based solution for documentation, documentation, move to Confluence, which is a wiki, wiki type, Content Editor, and then we connect it to lingo tech, which is a cloud based TMS. So you know, we were, we were always having, you know, changing and head of the industry, I would say, we were one of the first ones implemented machine translation, we implemented machine translation, I think, in 2007, or eight, where machine translation was really new in the area, I mean, not the concept of matric trust, machine translation, that’s actually started in the 70s. last century. But how to apply this to server localization documentation, basically, you know, how American companies for, you know, basically, out of the box, out of the box world, the blue, you would get somebody saying, okay, we need to reduce cost by how can we do that? Okay, so we have to translate double the cost. So we have to implement machine translation.

Andrej Zito 

So that was the main driving factor, why you gave MT a shot at a time?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Yes, yes, yes. And I’m going to say something which will know some very unpopular people and industry. But at that time, we were we had a team of 120 people worldwide. And for a large corporation, Corporation, these type of huge teams doing localization testing, translation, validation, review everything, that was the ideal scenario, this is not sustainable in these type of companies, because when they look at the numbers, you know, the first thing you see is my doing so many people, and why you would have such a huge budget for translation. So my mind will or at least not at the beginning, because I know I must participate in that they add to the world, but they non spoken, go goal was to dismantle the team was to reduce the team. And, and it was really, really hard, because we had very good people, extremely good people that we’d have to terminate. Because when we implemented machine translation, obviously, we negotiate a better price with the vendors, we eliminate the internal transaction team, we eliminate all the testing team, that was a progressive, not didn’t happen overnight. But we move from in 10 years, we move from 100 plus people 120 plus people to 90, tomorrow, manage everything and the volume were huge. Were double. And going through that process, as I said, was really painful. Because for me was like, you know, we have the best thing in the world. Why do we have to dismantle it, but now mean now are not now but you know, in the latest years at CAA realize that that is the approach, that is the trend in the market, so you cannot go against market trends, it doesn’t matter. You need to take advantage of that situation and invent and innovate. So the last few years I was at ca my main role was basically innovation, apart from managing the process, because we managed to get to a very high level of automation. But apart from managing, I was really innovating and looking at the market looking at the trends and seeing how could we implement those trends?

Andrej Zito 

How do you remember the first response of all the translation teams when they saw machine translation, I can assume Like when you started, like the quality was probably pretty poor, right?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Oh, the first should was really bad people, you know, didn’t want to use machine translation didn’t want to become post editors. But we did something, not me. But the team did something, which I think was very clever is that, you know, we told them that that’s what we have to do. So that’s the upper management goal, they have to implement that. But they became it became their own project. Okay, so what we did, because that time machine translation in Estonia, neural machine translation, not at all. So what we did was was involved internal team, or evaluating different engines. So we were using different engines based on for each language, okay, depending on the evaluation we had done. And there was a mixture of rule base and statistical base at that time. And we will the team on educated in gym, and also training in gyms and training the technical writers and developer. So we spend a lot of time working with technical writers and developers on how to write for machine translation. And that was done by the translation. So the translators became content educators for machine translation, and they raise the project at the you know, that will help them to embrace the pros, because they could see that going through all these education for technical writers and developers, the output of the MT was very good. So we they realized that the output was really improved, especially for good bass. Because you know, and we were using technical writers, we’re using aqualine. At that time, so we’ve worked with they’re calling him to create rules or pulling rules for machine translation. So basically, the output was very good. So internal translators plus or non word service providers, they really, you know, they realize that they were sleeping more in less time. So we’ll do rates with obviously, lower, the output was very possible.

Andrej Zito 

So I assume that if you are at the forefront of innovation, when it comes to like, maybe like even like our industry in general, is that like, where the idea originated? For you to become a consultant later on with your own business?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Yeah, yeah, I think so because I happened to sit next to the VP of innovation in the company. This guy was hired in Barcelona, and he was driving the innovation. And he was working, like, he had different projects with different teams. And he was working like a like an a startup mentor. So I learned a lot, because I started working with him machine translation in processing, a lot of different approaches, even we even created the decision support system to select what to translate and how to translate something, we can talk about that later. But they really learn on how to evaluate the industry and how to design processes and tools, from an startup point of view, that you go for a minimal viable product, that you look for funding to pivot as necessary in order to accommodate to the requirements. And this industry, you know, at that time, the industry starts changing a lot. So So I got this ability or this, this expertise, if you want on to identify the requirements in our area, and to try to find the design innovations. And yes, as you said, I think that’s what helped me to know when I took the decision that maybe I should start my own consultancy, this way of thinking this training that I had had a TA working with innovation team really helped me to, to understand how to become a consultant how to ask the right questions, will different companies learn to understand what are the requirements and how to challenge also the technology that’s already in the industry?

Andrej Zito 

Yeah, I’m really impressed. And also kind of surprised that you kind of like had this like a startup hub within like a big organization. I think that’s like very, very important. Many big organizations fail because like, they’re slow and they’re used to their processes. You know, they’ve been using for many years, but they lacked this kind of like the startup mindset to test and explore new things, which I believe is what you guys we’re doing. And I really like that.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Yeah, CA was very good. We had one of the stakeholders that was hired by ca To do to lead this innovation, that was my VP, innovation VP manager, he used to work from Xbox, he was the guy that that did all the Xbox. So basically, yeah, that was innovation was meant to see a startup. But this is also happening now to a lot of companies. I mean, this is today, you go to Amazon, Amazon, they work like small startups, they, I think they even have like a wall for that, you know, you have an idea, and you write it down, and you know, you did vote, and if it is voted in, you know, you go to a certain number of boats to go and develop. So, although ca technology was a very traditional software development company at the beginning, they were leaders in innovation, and they were also leaders in things like DevOps, and how to, you know, you know, cloud based technology and DevOps, how to the, you know, to develop tools in this DevOps area. And how to adjust or redesign the software to work in on to to go to follow the trends in the market.

Andrej Zito 

So did the shift left approach originate during CA, or do it afterwards?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

My shiplake localisation approach originated during CA, because we realized already, you know, I realized, especially with this new innovation partner mentality, and that the globalization theme of the translation team traditionally was a very reactive thing. So they react, something happened, oh, my God, terminology is wrong, you rehab, but it’s always late, it’s older reaction. And you always have a pure project manager in the middle, trying to wear all the hats communicate to the translators, with language service providers, with developers trying to do the best and working late hours trying to, you know, organize or destroyed all this localization process. And I have one VPN, I mean, I, I have had great mentors in the industry, I have to say, I’m very, very, very lucky. Because one of the VPS came up with the piece that was in charge of all this to change. For software development, he came with the idea of, of compliance, compliance from from the very beginning, for example, he said that the team in different areas and globalization was part of this one was secure ability to develop server, it has to be secure, it has to be compliant with certain security requirements, that may vary depending on the country, maybe right, depending on the server can live off of variables there. But there’s no point of developing something which is not compliant to these security requirements. Okay, so instead of develop software, software, something which is not compliant, let’s making compliant from the very, very beginning. So that was a shift left on security, make people comply, so you know, you’re not we’re not gonna accept anything, which is not compliant. The first thing you have to do, obviously, you see to identify, which are these compliance, which are these requirements. Another area was the accessibility by xx abilities, especially in the US, means that you have to be compliant with certain certain legislation to make sure that the software can be accessed by anybody blind, death, etc. And also in any kind of, of hardware, mobile or laptop, or traditional desktop, in different navigate, etc. So there is an accessibility compliance. And in the US, they are very, very, very strong on that. So again, there’s no point of development is so well, it’s great features and may seem amazing options if it is not going to be compliant. So if you are not going to be able to sell it because it’s not compliant. So same with technical writers, you have to technical implementation in a way that can be used by you know, by the consumer, the customer, obviously, but also that can be localized. There’s no way you write something that we cannot change or we can not reduce translation, memory, etc. So there was another area of shift left, which was DevOps. So make sure that you use the appropriate tools in a job environment to develop so worth following certain requirements, especially the Agile development framework. We also bring brought at that time global session because it was the perfect tool, you know, the perfect project that goes across all these other projects. So you want to localize your project, you have to be compliant with certain requirements in that case, so localization and documentation, if you’re not complying with Unicode support, if your files are not stored in resource bundles, your variables are used in an active way that basically make the content for translation basically, nonsense for a translator, if you don’t provide any context translation, even with a screenshot or with a proper in context editor, etc, we’re not going to localize your server, because basically, the cost is going to be too high. And it’s going to be a real prompt. Okay, so that’s what shiplake approach idea came in, on, on on how, you know, let’s give the content creators at that time was only so far into limitation that that can be moved to any other many other areas, let’s give them the power they do. Have, some of the times they do things wrong are non compliant, because nobody has told them two different ways. Okay, so let’s invest in helping those teams to understand the requirement to deliver files, which are compliant. So we can automate the localization process by automation means just use the technology in the in the area of the TMS indology, to manage files up and down to apply it and provide translation memory. And let’s give more power and time to translators that will have to present the those are the guys that, that that really matter on our localization process. And typically, those are the guys that they don’t have time, the rates may not be good enough for them, you know, let’s put the focus on the left developers, contemporary doors market, there’s less automate as much as possible in process list, eliminate as much as possible, the role of the project manager. And again, this is something I’m becoming very unpopular employee used to become very unpopular in the industry. Now, you know, I get something that we start in positive, which I’m glad, and let’s help translators to, you know, to have all the all the information they need. And before, you know, just start bombarding me with questions on the project manager, I’m not saying the project manager role is not important, it is very important. But we need to, you know, it can be utilized in another way, in this educating technical writers or dictating the content creators, supporting translators, and building this relationship with the customer, etc, should not be used, creating quotes or dealing with translators trying to get resources, fighting for deadlines, etc.

Andrej Zito 

Don’t worry, I’m not going to bombard you with questions about project managers, because I basically came to the same conclusion that you did want them before, like when I was working at Autodesk. So yeah, I think it’s like one of the biggest waste in our industry, like when teams like have to, like manually copy take the files from somewhere stored in somewhere, send millions of emails just to get things translated, you know, a couple of words. So I totally support you in that. What I’m wondering more about is, you mentioned the education and the compliance. When it comes to content creation. I’m wondering how you did that education? Did you create some material? Did you do it like in person

Patricia Paladini Adell 

That was already funny, but we have that and that applies to CA technology, because it’s a big company. So you may want to do different companies. But that was so funny. I really enjoyed that. We, we created like, a road show. So we were traveling to the different hubs, who were agile at that time. Developers developers were located in five major camps. And they were a dial and they have all the standoffs etc. So we went to these different perhaps development paths. And, and we make a show, basically, I mean, we went on stage we had we know we, we, you know, ask them to come, you know, we set up all this calls with a nice food and we basically were explaining them what that means to be compliant with security accessibility technical writer, and the conversation. So, so we put together some some villains and some heroes. Yes, it was so funny. So the villains, I mean, the focus very important the focus plus hits to help heroes, okay, because we were telling developers and technical writers that they were heroes, but they were attack for certain villains, a villain could be hard coded strings of villains could be known Unicode support ability to be secured, you know security issues etc. So particularly for for localization, I really invented some villetta, we went to see like all these cartoons, I love it. So we will tell them, Hey, I mean, you’re not doing a good job, basically, because you cannot, because you really have to fight against those villains that they are not in helping you to deliver because basically, you don’t know what you have to deliver. So with that show, we held and we were lining up very, very clearly to their requirements. So we were given hacks to the heroes to fight the villains. Okay. And they love it, basically, they really love So, so in the localization area, and basically told them, okay, those are the requirements, the internationalization requirements that you have to meet. Okay, if you are comply with these contracts, and you feel you have the documentation, here, you have a tool that was its source scanner that we have developed. Okay, that was basically integrated with the development environment. So use the scanner didn’t even know there was a scanner that we have developed, use a scanner, and validate I mean, they’re gonna be hundreds of 1000s of false positives. Yes, we know, but use it. So you will understand what are the requirements? And, you know, the, the answer was really positive. Basically, developers, they, you know, they are developers, they, they want to be told what to use, or how to do something, and they do it, because they are really great minds. So the output was very good. I mean, I’m not going to say that anything was wonderful. And overnight, all the files were perfect, because we still have a lot of legacy and legacy products that were developing the very waterfall process. And this is something you have to cope with, you cannot really, yeah, but things started to change we were getting, I mean, this shift left approach also makes sense in this current scenario, because you don’t get any more huge fines of someone for translation, you get small chunks very often, but a small chunk, which is the giant local settlement, I don’t like to call it a giant localization doesn’t mean anything. But this is like the continuous localization, for software for product development in a giant environment to get the small chance. Okay, it’s no change of context. So. So the management is really easy, or simple, simple was pretty simple, because it’s really, you don’t need like, three months to the to translate something because the volumes are going to be small. So they started to realize that, and they were very happy and very eager to help. And we really have a lot of fun. With these villains and heroes approach that we use,

Andrej Zito 

You mainly mentioned developers, did you have a different strategy to educate marketing people or people who were creating documentation?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

That was our next customer, like internal stakeholder? We didn’t go that didn’t we didn’t reach that far. But yes, I think we would have a different strategy. Because they use different tools. And because the content is very different. So marketing works in a different way. Definitely, you have a lot of work or you know, we can do a lot of from a terminology point of view for probably point of view for consistency. And machine translation might not work that well in that area. So this is something you want to to think about. Okay. However, from an automation point of view, which is a great marketing, it’s a great opportunity, because most of the teams typically feel very isolated, creating the your content with your templates, some bringing all this data into a proper content management system for marketing content, so they can reuse and they can be consistent That’s something, I mean, some companies may be doing very good on there. But I see an opportunity there, especially with some pharmaceutical company, they don’t really have the trend is to have, you know, a lot of individual creation there, which I think this is an opportunity for content management organization. And once you have a content management in place, then you can automate, if you don’t have a content management in place, you can not too late. So that’s one of the requirements, if you want to shift left approach, this is the the keep the source content management for developers is relatively easy, because at the list, they’re going to be using data. But for all their areas, for technical writing, socially see, because they are used to contain them. For areas like marketing, so ecommerce, is even more challenge. But that’s even funnier.

Andrej Zito 

So you mentioned you share with us how you handled education within CA, I’m wondering how you approach education now, with your company with your clients.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

I’m doing a very similar approach. I haven’t get to the point of adult show yet. But I’m planning to do a couple of clients. But for me, the first thing you have to do is to understand how they work. What are they doing, why they do the things they do in the way they’re doing? And what are their requirements. And this is like a big part of the Year for sitting next to developer, technical writer to marketer to anybody and trying to understand their requirements. Once you have the requirement, then for me the most The second part is to see how can we organize that in a content management system, if they don’t have it, or if they already have, how can we can better and put together best practices or user guides on how to create that content. And what the source is clean organize them, you can go for a TMS, to enable this automation. And among talking, my clients typically are lacking our large medium or large corporations that they do have. This personal company may not make sense maybe with a SharePoint type of organization. It’s enough. But you know, this is the idea. And this has to be customized for the different customers and the different sides of the

Andrej Zito 

Why are small companies not a good fit for this is because of the low volume of content, it doesn’t pay anything?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Exactly. Let’s say it’s not good for this, you know, the investment. investment is an investment, like initial investment to you know, to get everything organized. In this instance, you know, you have to calculate the cost the overall cost people and translation cost and, you know, understand, and even infrastructure and everything to understand what’s the baseline so this is what you’re spending now in the in the localization of your digital content. And then evaluate if we’re, you know, where where can you reduce the cost, if the overall doesn’t pay off, meaning that you need to invest a lot in the CMS but the volume or the content of the of the updates, because it really localization twice a year, maybe you don’t need such an automated, perfect and ideal process. So, so it’s up to you, but still I am. I’m very interested in small companies also because they may not need like a huge new automated process. But they do need help to go to the digital transformation on the digital content noodling on digital content. So that’s an area you know, that’s an area that is worth investing, especially that those small companies which an ecommerce that you know, they are starting to grow, it goes to a point that they don’t stop and start delivering the content in a structured way. The technical depth they’re gonna get from a localization perspective is going to be so good, so huge that they will be able to deliver so There is room for improvement on every area. And for me, the most important part is really to understand the requirements to understand the roadmap, what a strategy, a long term strategy and to see what they, this can be happening.

Andrej Zito 

My experience, the large companies usually have their internal localization team as what’s your experience from ca? So I’m wondering, how do you come into the picture? In this scenario? We’re just like a deaf team. And there’s a localization team? Do you try to like get them to get it to talk and like, see, like, what they could do together? And then you just leave? Or are you mainly focusing on companies that don’t have a localization internal team?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Focusing on both types of companies? To be honest, I have analyzed companies, which are huge. localization team, huge, more than 100 people. Half of them in developers, India, half of them in the US. I mean, it’s huge. And they were very proud of the process. Very proud, because they have a great process pool of manual steps. I mean, they, you know, what they baby, they love it. But it’s nonsense. Because really, with the technology you have to have today, these things can be done in a different way. And, and so going back to your question, sorry, I think there’s room for improvement, because either a mature company with a very solid localization process, when you see, when you have a look on the outside, there’s a lot of things that can be changed. And the goal is not to terminate people or to refuse or should not be, but you know, to add, to make them do whatever tasks or roles they have to, you know, to make sure they can add, provide added value to the process, instead of, you know, going around in circles, with non automatic or old processes. And, again, I’m very in favor of changing rules, you know, you may be internal translator, but the volume anytime, so why don’t you get the vendor spend time as an internal translators as a super matter expert for that particular thing, spend time in educating the vendor, feeding them the, in a proper application with videos or webinars or whatever. And then maybe you can spend part of your time doing spot checks, or editing terminology. terminology is one of the, unfortunately, the Forgotten thing in Arabia, because nobody had time to do terminology management. Because the deadlines are so short, and that spending time and resources in terminology. Traditionally, it’s been a challenge. So why don’t we dedicate people that knows the content, and the language, spend time and terminology. So this can be shared afterwards with translators? So he’s really, I see transformation of the roles in the future, not eliminating people but transforming the job they do, and getting them doing more added value tasks.

Andrej Zito 

You mentioned technology, of course, technology plays a huge role in the continuous localization. So I’m wondering that you, for your clients, like Do you have any preferred solutions that you suggest to them that they should use as a technology? Or is it based on what works better for each client?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

It is totally based on what works better for each client. I don’t have any proof or technology. In fact, I think the current technologies are getting old. Okay, good. I’m challenging the industry. Okay, I’m not saying they’re not good. They’re not just but they’re starting to get old, artificial intelligence. That’s the major trading of the new technologies that we will be using in the next year. And we do have what is most important for artificial intelligence, which is paper. You know, it’s something that translation companies and translate companies doing translation have that they have data, because we have translation memory, because we have more so, because we have more flows. So we do have the data. So the knowledge in the future has to be driven by artificial intelligence, by management by exception Most of the technologists today, they are still too much focused on the project management role. So the technology needs a PM, a project manager to set up the project, to validate that everything goes fine to get the code to send whatever. So, the purpose is still the project manager, instead of getting the full course on on the content and the translator, I mean, the team, it should be able to automatically assign the tasks. To the translators that did this test before they have proven expertise on a particular area, or particular language, that should be automatic ways of, of validating the translations, for example. And this is something we created an MPV, orientdb et CIE, we created, like technology that would if you are like a junior translator, okay, you’re going to be paid small, because you’re going to be learning and you are going to be preview. So you will have somebody reviewing you and providing you with feedback in the system, everything in the system. So the more you learn, the higher rate you will have for translator, translation, because the risk that you make mistake is lower, because you’ll be learning. So you will learn that you reveal tasks is going to be lower, smaller. Okay. So that side you find a balance to review. Because you review look at the review because you are learning, the more you improve the ledger reveal, because there is less risk.

Andrej Zito 

And all this balancing you have automated?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Yes.

Andrej Zito 

Really? Wow.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Artificial intelligence. I can’t do it- I don’t know how to do it. But we were developing something like that in this innovation. But obviously, the main challenge with CA, and it was my challenge, not the company is that ca was not a translation agency. They weren’t a software development company. So even if I was trying to develop tools for localization, that was not in focus. So obviously, we were able to put together all these tools and, and Mbps but they wouldn’t develop them. Because obviously, that’s no but there

Andrej Zito 

It was’nt their business. Yeah.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

So that was good, because some of the ideas we had at that time are starting to happen now. Their team is now that they have a lot of artificial intelligence, and they’re able to do to automate, etc. So going back to your question, or if I have preferred tools, no, don’t get ready, I’ll end up developing the best tool. But another area, which I think CMS in general, still have some area of improvement in some data reporting way data is reported in the TMS quality data. Because the view content from everything should be in the TMS with proper categorization. So time to delivery workers, multiples is maybe the day they are doing good, because that’s how they get you know how the cost is calculated, but tend to deliver value more sample review. Cost of this distance, I mean, anything you can imagine, the CMS should be able to provide this type of information in a way it can be tested. And some of the CMS they do have plenty of export file with locks amazing, but you need to go to an external tool and you know, an import that data and start trying to create this and this data and typically you don’t have real time because there is this import export process in the middle. So for me, this is another area of you know where these, these tools can be improved. Another area my opinion for improvement. Now that we have data, for example, and this is not so focus on the tool, but on the client is what to translate. This is one of the challenges we used to have at CAA. Basically, we weren’t translating word, problem, tone nurse or problem teams or market or sales people were thinking they wanted to sell, okay, but it was very hard to get the feedback on the use of these localized Obviously, pre use the cloud area, there was no way of getting any feedback. Once you go to the cloud, and you calculate the names, you can download, etc. It’s kind of you know, it’s easier or this is an area where you can start improving, although it’s very difficult to, to to know which language which local users using, because it depending on the browser cetera, but taking translation decisions based on the usage of this content, or the demand of a particular market, that’s also very, very interesting. And gaining control companies are doing a good job of their DNA localization. Because they do have first time, first hand sort of first time data information on the user behavior of the user experience, so that they’re doing a good job, because for them, it’s very easy to collect this information and make the right decisions on what to translate. And obviously, because gaming is so such a personal thing that your audience is going to be, you know, anybody that wants to play, you know, with software companies like CAA, their audience, in fact, the audience from large companies like ci was developers. And today, most of the developers know English, at least from you know, from a regional development point of view. So you may not need to translate to that many languages. Because and the way the documentation is done today is really different in the area. Beginning they were you have this huge user guide that was static that you cannot edit. Now, the condition doesn’t exist anymore. It’s really a database, and users can add content. Support adds content, developers add content. So this is a huge reminder effects that may not follow any, any structure. So that’s also very interesting to analyze.

Andrej Zito 

Yeah, let’s talk about the user generated content. Like how do you think the continuous localization fits in because I think that’s like a primary candidate for full automation right? Without even like any person touching anything.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

And the only way continuous localization can fit in is using machine translation for user generated content, there is no way you can translate and keep everything up to date of sushi user generated content. So machine translation is a way to right direction to go generate multilingual bots for helpdesk for example. And, and then neural machine translation then you know, neural machine translation is missing, how good it is, and how quickly you can train it to get in all language to fulfill the language requirement in the past language means or listener area means ramar terminology and strategy struggle. Now, you know, there’s not enough people speaks in a very different way they do make typos, they invent new words and abbreviation so machine translation has to quickly pick up this information and reduce and use it for concession it has happened to me and in area in the industry that happened to me, the answer was in Spanish was good. My only the only thing I found is strange is that it was taking quite long. It was it was the reply was taking long. Take a lot many means five minutes is not. But that was what I made me think this is machine translation. I don’t know if there was some posterity because there are companies that you know, do this for doing posterity and on empty. But the opportunity was good enough for me to have a conversation because my myself company was in I was not able to call from home because it was some kind of official with no cell phone company or whatever. But he was amazing was amazing. I would there.

Andrej Zito 

You mentioned the term management by exception. So for people who don’t know what it means, could you quickly describe what it means?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Yeah, manageable by exception makes means to set up a process in a way that everything is automated, everything goes you know on its own, so there’s no surprises that you have than standard content, standard poor translation standard translation memory. So you did set up a process to set the deadlines requirements, and it goes along that management makes section. The only thing the exception means that if something happened, like that line not met, tm, multiply whatever Something happened, you should be able to identify this with a ticket with a flat with a natural. So you can take an action. So your action is to solve whatever exception or whatever problem is, your action as pm in that case, is not setting up the workflow, this is something you do, you do once, and you reuse many. So this is a concept of management by exception. And then going back to the previous question of small companies need that depend depend on the volume. The volume is more smaller, you don’t have like, huge jobs or small jobs, but very frequently, maybe you don’t need such a huge setup. To manage my exception.

Andrej Zito 

This may be a tricky question. I’m not sure if you can answer it, but let’s give it a try. So when we’re talking about small companies, or medium or large, doesn’t matter. In all cases, it will be the ROI, right of the investment. So I’m wondering, like how you would help these companies determine the ROI because that’s like a very fuzzy question in our industry as well, you know,

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Yes, it is. And I have a colleague, that, you know, he works with us in one of the webinars we do explain the you know, this shift left approach and he is specialized in ROI. ROI is not return of investment. I mean, it is return of investment, obviously, but not in an area are really means how more automation you can do in the process, how quickly you can be how happy your customers going to be. So it’s very difficult, very difficult to get, like a numeric error, it’s, it’s really impossible sometimes, but you can say, the opportunity, for example, the opportunity, you are missing the mark of opportunity, you are missing out on local life. So instead of trying to say, you know, we spend x now and we automate, we will spend x minerals, whatever, you should say, Okay, we have a market or potential market in China or in Japan, of that many millions, if we don’t localize these guys will not be using this. So what in this language, obviously depend on the software depend on the product. But that’s sometimes the idea that we have to, we have to put together in order to justify an hour and is really the opportunity we’re facing. And also the user experience. As I said, we already mentioned that if you have development, developers in China, maybe speaking good English enough to know to set up your door, and if they need to have you can go through an automatic chat box. So maybe your focus is not to do full perfect translation of the full content. But if you’re doing that for Japan, that maybe that’s, you know, it’s it has to be a different approach. Because the requirements in Japan, if you’re translating for France, or Canada, with the sensibility of the cultural aspects of the language are so important. You may want to take all the decisions, okay. So that’s, I think, for me, the the way I write should be presented on taking into account the cultural intelligence, the scooter requirements for the different countries and looking at the opportunity you are missing. Obviously, you can also add the power to say okay, now you have 20 people managing the system, and maybe you can, you know, you can reduce to less people more information, obviously, this is also some apart, you can also bring in that when you go into those companies that they don’t really have any process in place, calculating the baseline, it’s kind of even possible because there are so many parties involved that you cannot really calculate the baseline. So, so, finally, they are demonstrated to put into the ROI in the traditional way for your industry, you will have to go for these other ways of, of analyzing license and most of the time, another arrow is that the globalization localization, especially for large corporations, it’s really so across all the departments, so we end up helping other people to make their life easier with a proper content management system with a proper requirements for localization, etc. So this is also important, you know, because you are really facilitating somebody else day to day. So this hash also has to be taken into confirm your point of view. That is not that we as vocalisation gonna reduce cost is that this other team is going to be able to produce more, because we are simplifying the, the way they the content or the output recorded for the session.

Andrej Zito 

When we’re talking about the technologies. You mentioned AI. So obviously, it’s related to nmt. I’m wondering if you have like any other ideas, how do you think AI will affect localization?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Well, what, obviously about how we will report data, the different data usage, and from the localization perspective, and also from the consumer perspective, I think that’s also the critical area. So we are going to improve. And another area, which is not that popular, but my personal opinion is going to start growing is or subtracting. And we are getting more and more to reveal this one content and getting that subtitle. And obviously, this is where artificial intelligence plays a major role also on how can you move, change, sharing text, sorry, speech to text? How can you automate all these transcription from this channel to another? And how can you do that? I think that’s also going to be very, very critical in the future. And this is tapping out. If you listen to my kids talking to Alexa, or Siri, their phones, if I talk to Alexa, it’s a nightmare. She doesn’t understand me. Tell her please turn off the light. Women, our kids come and say Mother, tell her dad and you know, it works. So the the new generations the word they grow, they’re parroting all these new patterns. So we need to start thinking about that, because then we’re going to be reading localizer texts, they’re going to be listening to something. And as they set up something, they will have a boy saying click here at this comment. I don’t know. But that’s gonna happen. So we need to stay there. And again, all this is fostered by artificial intelligence. Same as with with click, I mean, my kids, they don’t click anything. They don’t click a mouse anymore. They basically swipe the screen. They, you know, they do all this manual swapping happen. Now, they even for my kids the other day, he was trying to light to you know, to light the light. And he was instead of clicking on the on the commute. He was basically struggling with his headline trade. He don’t mean he doesn’t word the light is the word. No, no, you have to click. He was because he was used to, you know, to, to suit. I don’t know if this is the right word. But you know, when you move your pattern? And I said, well, man, yeah, of course. I mean, that’s the world you’re living in. This is all technology, clicking, you know, turn on the light.

Andrej Zito 

Yeah, I thought when you were saying this, I thought that you meant like, he had like an app on his phone. And he was like, swiping it to, like, turn off-

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Basically, on the actual physical on the actual, the actual thing. I mean, first of all, he was he was disappointed because he was chopping at the thing. And nothing that happened, you know, the light would not turn on. And secondly, he was trying to be on the wall trying to do that. He’s a baby, obviously. But, but that’s how that’s how they’re growing.

Andrej Zito 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Maybe one thing we could discuss is the quality aspect of continuous localization and all this automation. Do you think there is an impact or do you think it actually improves the quality?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

I think it improves the quality. Again, continuous localization, by definition means small chunks have text. So the quality is easy to keep quality, high quality with small chunks of text, obviously, and for me, especially in software implementation, localization, recording contract translation is social must, there is a lot of waste of money managing cranes up and down, this is one of the sort of Project Manager tasks that is managing spreadsheets. So the expression somewhere else sharing the spreadsheet with different languages with the same person, etc. So, so continuous localization, quality is going to improve, as long as you are able to automate all these non profitable tasks. Imagine, just add a comment in the server hour maybe as the you know, make sure developers are aware of that variables they need to interest, they just need to know what are they going to replace it by, because a day or number or an order, whatever. And that comment as you develop the server and because you have developed in small chunks, it’s going to be it’s not like an over you know, you can this is not something you can do. As an afterthought, you want to have you finished a software you cannot say okay, now comment all the variables not gonna worry about these, they do it from the very beginning. And they add comments, which resident us can see in the capital. But these rarely able to remove replace for that. That’s extremely helpful on this course, that quality, one of the tools we developed at CAA was basically what we call context tm. Okay. And developers, when they were supposed to turn over the clients for every word that wasn’t the was like, fine, but that’s fine. It’s a noun, it’s bad. So for those districts that were single language, single word streets, we created the database, and that was a future, but we did create a database with different options file in German may have 123 possible translations in Spanish one, in that other country language may not be. So we would ask the transit developers Okay, what do you mean file us in? firelight now, and based on the translation on the sorry, based on the answer of the developer, and basically have to choose one ABC, so it was really easy for them. Or they could even add a comment wanted, we already had the translation, you know, tm, photo languages. So that particular segment that was Sunday was, the translator would not even get it for translation, because we would get a get a translation from this context. Team. That’s what we call, so that we were eliminating a huge amount of grace and waste and last minute updates, you know, and going waiting for developers to answer the queries, etc. So that type of approach really helps and continues for conversation. Again, okay, this is the question we’ll go back to the education part, we have to ask developers not to learn that if they commend any possible wiki DeVito variable. From a translation point of view, this is going to be continuous, otherwise, it is not going to be continuous. There’s one more thing which affects continuty especially a German and German environment, which is testing localization testing. This has changed a lot in the industry. And I know you used to work without the pro to this. I’m sure you were involved in huge rounds of localization testing, yes, yes, different languages that is not happening anymore. You need to use pseudo concession you use pseudo localization language.

Andrej Zito 

Can you can you can you explain for people who don’t know what it means, position

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Sure, pseudo localization is basically to to replace the text the source text in English or whatever language with the same text with the prefix and suffix which is like nonsense that and typically you try to add some non standard characters. So you can really see that like accents or or special numbers. So you can see that it displays okay. in an environment so basically, developers would get this fine pseudo translated, and we will create the deal. So the translated here, and in that translated below, so the localized deal, they are able to identify potential issues potential We choose display issues or truncations. For example, in German, most probably the text is going to be longer. So you have to make sure developers allow enough space with the cloud systems. Now most basic sentences here. But basically, developers can be trained and educated to identify or testers can be trained and educated to identify these potential localization issues, the fix before localization, and this one, this is compliant, then you can send it to translation, send it back. And you don’t need to do any more testing, like he used to be in the past, because it has already been tested in this pseudo language. That’s what I mean by continuous localization, and pseudo localization. So

Andrej Zito 

I know that we are doing some pseudo localization. And I can see the benefit of testing pseudo localized built at early stage, I’m still wondering, like, if there’s something that we’re missing, if we’re not testing the actual localized product,

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Let’s put it that way, there is no risk zero approach. Okay, what you can do is to reduce the risk, if you pseudo pseudo localization. If you provide translation in context, to translators, basically, they see the you know, they are translated on a web application, they see the context as a present, or they have the structure associated to each string, their translation translated, if you control the text, the source text, if you write in a way, you’re eliminating the with this, you. You’re right, for machine translation, okay, like proper sentences, taking into account of this software, so you may not have proper sentences. But if you follow certain best practices, and if you eliminate those so possible, and be with these life variables, within the meaning of the variables, or you will be hard for the District, which is what you identify during the surgical session, then the risk of, of making mistakes, and it’s really good use. So maybe you can go for that option. You have to think that if you want if you need to add testing, like traditional testing in an agile environment, and then try localization in a giant development environment, if you are testing, that means it’s not a giant Oh, it’s not putting. So it’s really difficult to do anything afterwards, maybe, you know, maybe, because everything is so flexible. Now, from a development point of view, maybe you want to release whatever, you know, if you follow these best practices release, but you have a maybe then you can spend some time doing a final validation on the actual live application. Okay, you can, you can take the risk. And if all of a sudden you realize a lot of mistakes, then there’s something wrong, something, but putting together this plan on, on doing this, this final validation on the left application, it should be the right approach for this agile development process, because it’s so easy to update those files, you know, maybe you find a mistake, you update the files in the system, and to create another build, they know they do builds every night. In fact, so it’s really, you know, it’s going to be 24 hours a day out there. So you can take you can take the risk terminology, you mentioned that the terminology is so so key here, you know, humanity terminology properly. So, so, you know, translators can concentrate and translate them into property.

Andrej Zito 

Before we ventured into testing localization, you were talking about the queries and the like, the queries are greatly reduced. with continuous localization, I can still imagine that there will be queries at some point. So I’m wondering, because I don’t know exactly like how this works. But if you have developers, and the content goes flows directly to translators, how can translators as queries back to developers so that it’s not stuck on pm?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

We’re talking about software development. Now. He’s made my proposal main not work for magazines, for example, okay. But there’s a very easy way of doing that. Connect your TMS, to developers issue tracking system, JIRA or whatever they use. So, they will they will date accordingly in the in the queue. And they have to answer because otherwise, they cannot deliver the key here so that’s the solution. Basically, make sure it becomes the Problem is not a project manager problem has to be developer problem. The point here is how to do these queries in in the right way. And this is a translator certification. Okay. You cannot ask translators cannot ask, I don’t understand what do you mean? Or what is it translation, you will have to educate developer and this is something we did say you have to educate translators and renders the right questions. For example, if you have adult, certain some of the grammar is grammar is something you cannot understand. You need to say, Okay, what do you mean? a? Or do you mean be making very simple developer developers and developers, ones and zeros, you don’t really need to be them, you know, to some things that are too precise. Let’s make it very simple for them. So you know, our translator has to be located in writing, asking the right person the right way. And you have to make sure you don’t duplicate the questions to the one the same question as asked by different different languages and things like that. But that would be the approach integrate that into the development path. We have not talked about dominance for tenure in the Agile software development, but localization compliance international sessions should should be part of the doneness criteria, meaning that you cannot localize or the the, the, the iteration in the guide is not finished until the position is not a contest and completed properly. Okay, it could go either way, I’m going a little bit technical, but in their giant framework. International internationalization and localization are not considered as like Dani squeaking and they are really consider us known I don’t remember the name right now. But they are not they are not core functions, they are something that is transversal to different teams that they don’t believe, you know, they are not core components, they should be concurrent components. This is something I have already discussed with the child framework. Team, you know, hopefully someday they will be able to put the business case in place. So they change the requirement and sorry, non functional requirements at the localization and internationalization are considered non functional requirements. Meaning it’s good to have, but it’s not an obligation, and they should become functional requirements. So bonus criteria of the different iterations should be the equal concession is required, it has to be done. And if you know, you have to wish iteration, you know, developers will want to automate as much as possible, otherwise, it won’t be.

Andrej Zito 

Right. You’re talking about the quality of nmt. And you were saying that it’s like very, very good. I know in my earlier episodes, I was covering an article. I don’t know his name, but I think he’s the father of Kratos, he created trellis. And he was saying also pretty much the same thing that nmt will eventually take over because the quality is getting better better every day. And he was thinking about how the role of translators will change. So I’m wondering, what do you think will happen to translators if an MTgets super good?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Good question. First of all, maybe we should point the question in a different way. It’s not that the MT is getting good, or super good, which is super, but it’s really fulfilling the requirements. It doesn’t have to be on this list. Don’t talk about quality like romantic grammar, etc. No, it’s really fulfilling the requirements for that particular use case. Get in if you already the checkbox doesn’t meet perfect grammar, you need understandable content. So empty is getting better and better for that particular area that is really fulfilling the scope of that transition with respect to the user and the user experience, which is something we’re not talking about and we should be start talking more. So what happened for the translators translate shown on the areas we are translating today may not be as critical as it is today. So there will be a shift translators will become more boutique translation. So translating content which is not that technical, which is not mainly for more focus on marketing or creativity, content, etc. But technical content will change Interest rates will become more maybe editors or validators of the neural machine translation, depending on the areas, but they do see a shift on the way translators work. I definitely, but I don’t think they will disappear. But they will have to work in a different is similar to Pamela to say that to the, you know, translators, the way you used to be in the early 70s, which basically, they were, you know, they had to move something tape or like a book, and they basically, were translating no more than a very old war. And they have to print it and send it back to the end of the day that that will change. If not, he will help us to work in another way. One of the questions See, we could ask, and I may not have the answer. So I’m asking myself a question now is what will happen with language service providers? The way Lang language service providers are set up today. That’s also going to because disintermediation, I think foresee will also be one of the trends we will see in the future. Because if you have technology that can do or can take tasks, that traditional we’re doing the language that we provided, which basically, for example, having a pool of translators, technology will allow us to go move from a crowdsourcing approach, a crowdsourcing, meaning, you pay the translators, for what they bought is not free translation, that was something that was very confusing at the beginning. No, basically, translators can self assign the task that they get in a particular poll these tasks that are appropriate for them based on the expertise or the knowledge area, on the deadline, etc, on the premium stats, cetera. So why do you need and then what’s every provider, if technology can could connect the requester with the transmitted, let’s see how that works. I’m not saying that language service provider will disappear. But I think they have to reinvent or they will end up reinventing themselves, there will be a separation about technology providers. And language service like pure language service, common thing this is happening right now, not many companies are able to, to deliver both and those that are doing which has this huge big traditional LSP. So I think they are getting very old technology, and they need to invest a lot in make that technology more flexible. So let’s see how it goes. I’m not saying they’re going to disappear. I’m not saying something’s going to happen in the short time, but in the lower right. And the wrong time, this is going to change and maybe one of them knew the transformation, they my opinion, they will go through will end up doing this more boutique translation of all that type of content, or, or tasks like validating or different content or testing applications, like application, not traditional testing, or doing ABC testing, I mean, there are a lot of other areas they can, they can communicate in a way everything which is related to intelligence, and user experience, how to write how to translate how to what to translate this type of analysis or this is gonna be something that analysis could be doing in the future. So the business side of things is no longer in the translation itself. But should be in this added value in this other folder, and tasks or services that they can provide. I was talking with another video today. And they were doing very good on on posterity machine translation for chat box. Okay, so basically, the chat bot was using neural Mt. With you know, the intents and insurance and all these they were this neuron he was trading with this, this type of content. And so the communication was between the cost the user and The recording was by neural but all this content was kind of a store and was sent to translation afterwards. So those shoulders were adjusted. And then the empty engine was retrained. So the task was really to adjust in a very simple way. Because again, it was a it chat box, so to speak, for grammar, but he was cleaning up those empty answers. He is not even fulfilling things really like cleaning up. So it can be ranging from between or out of that. So it’s not the actual translation, because the surface is really don’t complete it. But recreating content creating content to train that for me, what, one example for new tasks that those companies maybe end up doing.

Andrej Zito 

So let’s let’s look into the crystal ball one more time. And let’s talk about project managers. Because we’re talking about project managers before

Patricia Paladini Adell 

I knew you were gonna hit me with that.

Andrej Zito 

I’m just wondering, like, what do you think? How do you see their role shifting with more automation happening?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

The way I see the role shifting is really educating the requesters indicating the business, understanding their requirements, and setting the proper strategy from that particular customer with that particular content. And helping translators on the day to day not like looking for translators, or selecting translators, really helping them that they have all the information that they get their queries answered. That validating that the files that are sent to the translators, through the system, are compliant to follow certain best practices, etc. and acting or taking action, if there is an exception of something was wrong, or whatever reason, what should be the exception?

Andrej Zito 

What do you think is wrong with our industry? Where do I start?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

I think we have a great industry, I love this industry are not always have to select obviously, that’s, that’s, that’s not the job is to, but and I think what happens with any industry, okay, my impression is that we are getting all the technologies that you know, we are not able to, to cultivate or to innovate, taking into account the changes that are happening. Okay. And so that got us a lot of opportunities, a great opportunity, put it that way. But one of the customers I have now they’re doing rify for TMS and we are evaluating several TMS in order to fulfill the customer’s requirements. And what I notice is that those different TMS, they tried to change the way the customer work, so it can fit the TMS. And that’s not should be flexible. Yeah, it’s really, you know, we have this discussion about with one of the customer or the potential TMS and they were, you know, I wasn’t really understanding what they were saying, because one of the workflows we may have is just machine translation, we, you know, just get something machine translated, get it back, so you can test for something. And the team is particular the focus was a team. And they may realize that you cannot create the workload without going through a camp, because the team is used to be the center of the teams. And things are changing. Again, you may not want to use a tn because your content may not be good enough, because it’s already much interest that actually you don’t want to maintain teams, which have not been properly posterity, but those deals may be created later. Okay. So that flexibility and this is just an example. That flexibility is where what we should be able to, to compensate. And in defense technologies, providers, it’s not easy. It’s not easy, because some of these tools are very low. So they have very solid structure, very, very solid destructor. But it’s not flexible. Today, everything was the way forward developers with the small models, that containers that they work independently and you just get the content that you need. for that particular action, and traditionally those sub work also for technology are more like a core technology which you cannot change. And I understand it’s not easy to reinvent or to revamp or to create something that I think we should move away from these monolithic tools and try to go to something more flexible in order to accommodate the requirements of the customers, which will change.

Andrej Zito 

So how does your day look like right now, when you’re working? For your own business? When do you wake up? How do you start your day?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Oh, my God, this is really, I’m learning to woke when I have a fraternity because I know I apart in the past, in a particular situation, we have now with this covid 19 pandemic, which is totally unexpected, and you swap my day to day is really most of my time in LinkedIn, reading what other people say, understanding what are the requirements looking for ghosts to to, to understand good new ideas or to old stuff, how things are changing, etc. So that’s most of my time really trying to get these ideas have to think how can we do things in a different way. And when I work in on particular customers, most of my time is really talking to the users understanding the requirements. And then I will write that the document or a procedure or, or a wiki page for that particular customer with information they want. But most of my time is really talking, talking, talking and communicating with everybody. It’s, it’s, I mean, I have not realized that until my question that most of my day is really because traditionally, it was supposed to be predictable approach to producing something. But I know I’m not I’m really thinking and trying to see how can accommodate the tendencies to the different customers to the requirements. Another thing I do I spend a lot of time is participating in all the initiatives, which are not directly related with my company, but but with connecting to other people, especially if I’m part of women in localization. I spend some time there, I’m leaving the metrics part, trying to understand how can we make good metrics for the organization. But, and that’s really good, because you happen to meet a lot of people, which is very surprising. And it’s really caused me to talk to people in other companies and to understand the challenges. So connected to people, especially woman that we have this, this amazing, you know, way of sharing information and mentoring each other. It’s really good part of my job. I also participate, you know, some other local organizations like one printer, which is a community for women, entrepreneurs, and talking to them and participate in the events, communicating explaining my challenges, really tells me tells me to understand what people need, what can they offer to them. So when I started my own company, I had like a very naive and great idea from my point of view, what I wanted to do, and my my obsession was to get a business plan, this is not going to do this. And through all this journey, I have realized that that’s in today’s industry. Unless you have like something you want to develop a prototype. You have no you know, what you want. The way you have to approach is really having the ability to understand and take the decisions of provide whatever customer was for you put this in play and once based on the needs, don’t try to put your idea to apply to Saudi Arabia. No, that’s a war because your ideal way to create that may not fix to that particular customer. However, if you pivoted a little bit and you open your your eyes and you don’t stop with your idea, it really gives you a lot of opportunities. So talking about listening, listening, listening, it’s really most part of my day today.

Andrej Zito 

Do you have any morning? Do you have any morning ritual? Like what do you do? First thing in the morning and how exactly these charts are working? Like what is the first thing you do?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Okay, I do something which I used to do before the pandemic? Yeah, no, I’m not. I mean, I say this not that I’m not an early person, I’m a Mormon. So I’m a lay person, so I can have more traffic at night. But am I doing the morning says or used to do before the amenities that I would get up at quarter to six, which is very, very early for me. And with two best friends in the neighborhood, we would go for a walk like a 45 minute walk in winter, summer, anytime. And so by a quarter to 747, we would be back home. So to start, you know, kids and all this stuff, but that 45 minutes talking with my best friends walk in quickly, I’m doing some exercise. It’s really very fulfilling. And typically, we don’t talk about work work because each of us work in a different thing. But it really helps me to, to wake up to listen to people to learn how to listen to understanding what what are the requirements in other areas, but that’s something I can apply in my, in my in my day to day, so he has this morning walking, sometimes we want to go to the swimming pool, which is good because they might do my thing. When I swim, I do my to do lists, they will all get out of the swimming pool with a really clear idea of meditation. I guess I even know when I get out of the swimming pool. I’m clear on what what are the three are?

Andrej Zito 

Is that where you plan your day?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Yeah. It’s really worth it.

Andrej Zito 

So does it mean? Does it mean that you prefer to do lists versus calendars? Do you use calendars just for meetings? How do you combine these two?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

No, yeah, I’m learning, okay, because I’m really learning. But prioritizing is very important. It’s so trying to get the clear picture what you have, and assigning time to each task. So I’m going to spend four hours to discuss to her for that particular task, I’m going to spend two hours in the medium because you can spend days I’m going to spend that many hours on writing best practices for wherever assign, you know, trying to get the whole week, keep it particularly leave Friday blank, because they are always something which Super spected on Friday, so I put that on Friday. And typically I try to do like three days for customers, one day for media, etc. Friday, for whatever could be fit. So that’s how I organize. And I always try to, to make sure to have this list of to do or what to do, or sign time. You know, to make sure I’m productive. And recategorize depending on how it goes. This is something I’m still working on that and I’m learning I’m not gonna say I’m perfectly because I’m not at all but I’m, I’m learning this is very difficult, different to what I used to work in, in the corporation because the corporation basically was like, you know, putting down fires all the time. And now I have been pressured I can Reno organize a team and assign time depending on your tasks. Time management is very important. And one of these associations I’m participating in here in Barcelona, they are really preaching on how to do this time management, how to organize how to set priorities, in order to be very productive. And I’m learning a lot you really learn a lot by talking to these ladies.

Andrej Zito 

What are you curious about right now?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

My problem is that I’m curious of anything. That’s that’s a problem because that means

Andrej Zito 

You have to prioritize right?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

You have to I’m the one that somebody says, oh, maybe we should do- I can do it. We should go in either to the family somebody needs to organize, I can organize. I know. So I try to stop doing things as much as possible because I would I mean, I would do a lot of things a lot. What am I curious about? I’m really curious about going back to the technology part to the all this quantum technology. Oh you know this new technology which is approaching regarding these How to maintain all these databases. How to to trace all the information is? No, bitcoins, no technology behind the word sorry blockchain exactly, under course, because I think this is something which we’ll be able to apply to an industry. I don’t know how yet. But definitely, we will be able to. So this is one of the areas that I have to say I don’t know much. And I know there are a couple of initiatives starting to think of that. So that’s an area thing we should we should start looking at, together with artificial intelligence.

Andrej Zito 

Yeah, you should definitely check out episode number 24. Where I spoke with Oksana catch, and she actually had an idea which relates blockchain to translation industry and how translators could use it. So

Patricia Paladini Adell 

I will listen to me. Because this is what happened. I told you, I didn’t know about this episode.

Andrej Zito 

Yeah, yeah. If you want, I can get you in touch with her. If you find it interesting. Based on what she says. Okay, let’s wrap it up. Is there? Is there anything I should have asked you, but I didn’t

Patricia Paladini Adell 

No.

Andrej Zito 

So I did a pretty good job, right?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Yeah. And I’m surprised because when you mentioned that there was going to be like a two hour call I was like it’s not going to happen.

Andrej Zito 

We did it. Yeah. That’s a lot of good information that you shared with us. Thank you. Yeah, definitely. So final words from yourself. If you could talk to everyone in the industry, what is it what you would say?

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Start challenging, start challenging knology the process the way of doing things, because things are gonna change. And we need to challenge and don’t be afraid of changes, changes are good. So let’s, you know, look at every new challenge, I cannot think of doing something different or learning something different. I know, this is very standard. You know, it’s like a mantra. But you know, even this opportunity with COVID-19. And in my house money we know we are very opposite characters. We love each other but we are opposite character. So in this is like, Oh my god, 14 days lockdown home, this is horrible, I can no go biking, for me is the opportunity to spend more time with with husband to cook I think cooking, which I’m a horrible cook. But now it’s getting better and better. I’m reading a lot. I’m spending time with kids. I’m doing sport, following this Instagram stuff. And do is probably the key to listen to music watching Syria. So for me is the lockdown of working on my project on my website. With all these tasks, I don’t have time. So what I want to say is that there’s always different ways to do things you can be depressed or upset because you knology is, is don’t want to say not good because he made a great technology, but it has to be aligned to the trends in the area and evolution in the innovation. Or you can take that as an opportunity to go further. This is something I also learned at CAA because we really developed amazing technology. That was never abuse, basically, because it wasn’t the right time, because it was not the right priority. But most of the things were developed at that time, like eight years ago, they are now in the market. So So I mean, although I was extremely frustrated at that time, as you can imagine. I learned a lot, and I think I can talk about is a way to talk now because I have this districting experience where I know I will not understand why such a good idea was not working. And basically it was not a problem with the idea. It was the problem with the moment, the time stakeholders, etc. So it’s always good to have the flexibility of mind to adapt to new challenges.

Andrej Zito 

All right.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Okay.

Andrej Zito 

Thank you very much, Patricia.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Nice to talk to you.

Andrej Zito 

Talk to you next time. Bye bye.

Patricia Paladini Adell 

Talk to you. Thank you. Bye.

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